Exclusive cataract surgical focus among ophthalmologists: a population-based analysis

OBJECTIVE An important potential unintended consequence of the growth of surgical subspecialization is the narrowing of surgical practice among comprehensive ophthalmologists. We investigated trends in the narrowing of surgical practice and the exclusive provision of cataract surgery. DESIGN Population-based, retrospective study. PARTICIPANTS All ophthalmologists and all ophthalmologic surgical patients in Ontario from 1994 to 2016. METHODS We linked several health care databases to evaluate the proportion of ophthalmologists who exclusively provided cataract surgery (and no other ophthalmologic surgery) and the proportion who provided other types of ophthalmologic surgical care. To further investigate surgical focus, we evaluated the proportion of surgical cases within each surgical area for each ophthalmologist. RESULTS Between 1994 and 2016, the proportion of ophthalmologists who exclusively provided…